Angela Ellis

One pandemic, many responses

Repository entry 1 July 2022

This is the third report from Local Trust’s research study exploring how 26 communities across England responded to the COVID-19 crisis.

It follows Strong than anyone thought, published in September 2020, which looked at the initial lockdown period and Now they see us, published in August 2021, which saw the communities adapting to a…

Rapid research COVID-19 Briefing #16: Community responses to COVID-19 – Connecting communities? How relationships have mattered in community responses to COVID-19

Repository entry 1 January 2022

This briefing, the 16th in a series seeking to understand how communities across England respond to COVID-19 and how they recover, explores the importance of ‘relational working’. It argues that approaches which rely on relationships to work, but also pay attention to the importance of relationships to the people that community groups …

Volunteering in community business: a digest of recent research

Repository entry 1 December 2021

Volunteers are critical to how community businesses help to make places better. They help root community businesses in their local communities, and their time is central to community businesses’ financial viability. In fact, some community businesses would not exist at all were it not for volunteers.

This digest summarises three re…

Rapid research COVID-19 Briefing #14: Community responses to COVID-19 – Sustaining community action

Repository entry 1 September 2021

There is a growing body of evidence on how communities have responded to COVID-19, highlighting an early surge in community action and the subsequent power of communities to meet the needs of residents during crises. More recently, however, as the pandemic has continued longer than anyone imagined, there is increasing evidence pointing towards …

Volunteering in community business: meaning, practice and management

Repository entry 1 September 2021

This report attempts to fill in some of the gaps in understanding what volunteering means in practice in a community business context. Through a wide-ranging qualitative study, researchers from the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research explore how volunteering is conceptualised and managed, the role and influ…

Now they see us: Communities responding to COVID-19

Repository entry 1 July 2021

The study is based on primary data collection from 26 communities across England and a literature review. Over 500 learning conversations have taken place with members of the community, activists and workers, alongside interviews with Big Local reps (individuals appointed by Local Trust to offer tailored support to a Big Local area and sha…

Rapid research COVID-19 Briefing #12: Community responses to COVID-19 – Potential and limits of community power in a pandemic

Repository entry 1 May 2021

New concepts of community power have risen up the policy agenda during COVID-19. Communities have widely been seen as integral to meeting local needs and as having the capacity to respond rapidly to the pandemic. The idea of community power is often assumed, in policy terms, to be a universally beneficial force. However, this fails to address i…

Rapid research COVID-19 Briefing #11: Community responses to COVID 19 – Power and communities

Repository entry 1 April 2021

Community spirit has flourished and community power has been realised during the pandemic. But as thinking turns to recovery and ‘building back better’, it is timely to think critically about how power operates within and between communities, and to consider what this might mean for its potential for transformation. In this briefing we look…

Rapid research COVID-19 Briefing #6: Stepping up and helping out: grassroots volunteering in response to COVID-19

Repository entry 1 October 2020

In Briefing 5, Volunteering through crisis and beyond: starting, stopping and shifting, we provided an overview of literature on volunteering. It ended with a question: would all those who have stepped up in their communities call themselves volunteers?

Our current research into community responses to COVID-19 across 26 areas of England offers…

Rapid Research COVID-19 Briefing #5: Volunteering through crisis and beyond: Starting, stopping and shifting

Repository entry 1 September 2020

The contribution of volunteers in the response to COVID-19 has rightly received considerable attention. Media reports have suggested levels of participation are soaring, but behind the headlines lie a series of questions about what volunteering is taking place, who is getting involved and how it is organised. This briefing draws on literature a…